Borges and His Fiction: A Guide to His Mind and Art, A Revised Edition

Chronology

Chronology 1899 Born 24 August, at 840 Tucumán Street, Buenos Aires. Son of Jorge Guillermo Borges and Leonor Acevedo de Borges. 1906 Borges’s translation of Oscar Wilde’s ‘‘The Happy Prince’’ appears in an Uruguayan newspaper. 1912 Publishes a short story, ‘‘El rey de la selva’’ (‘‘King of the Jungle’’). 1914 The Borges family leaves for Europe. Lives in Switzerland after war breaks out. Borges attends lycée in Geneva. Learns French, German, and Latin. 1916 Hipólito Yrigoyen, Argentina’s first Radical president, is elected (Radicals to remain in power until 1930). 1918 Borges graduates from lycée. Travels and lives in Spain, where he befriends members of the ultraı́sta literary circles and publishes poetry. 1921 The family returns to Buenos Aires. With financial aid from his father, Fervor de Buenos Aires, a book of poems, is published. Borges founds, edits, and publishes work in little magazines. 1923 The family leaves again for Europe. Borges spends a year in Spain. 1924 The family returns to Buenos Aires. 1925 Luna de enfrente (Moon across the Way), poems; and Inquisiciones (Inquisitions), essays. 1926 El tamaño de mi esperanza (The Extent of My Hope), essays. 1928 El idioma de los argentinos (The Language of the Argentines), essays. 1929 Cuaderno San Martı́n (San Martı́n Notebook), poems, wins second prize in annual Buenos Aires municipal literary contest. Borges buys an eleventh edition Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1930 A right-wing army coup deposes the Radical government of Hipólito Yrigoyen. Evaristo Carriego, essays. 1932 Civilian government is restored, with Conservatives retaining de facto power through the decade. Discusión (Argument/Debate), essays. 1933 Borges is appointed literary editor for weekly arts supplement of Crı́tica, a tabloid. 1935 Borges’s grandmother, Frances Haslam de Borges, a longtime resident of the family household, dies. Historia universal de la infamia (A Universal History of Infamy), his first collection of stories. 1936 Historia de la eternidad (A History of Eternity), essays. 1937 Borges’s father dies. Borges begins work as an assistant cataloguer in a small branch library. 1938 Suffers a head wound, develops blood poisoning, barely escapes death. 1939 Spends several weeks in hospital. Begins writing his most important stories. 1941 El jardı́n de los senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths), eight stories. Government of President Ramón Castillo openly favors Axis powers. 1942 The Garden of Forking Paths is nominated for the National Literary Prize, but a lesser author is awarded. Sur puts out the ‘‘Desagravio a Borges’’ (‘‘Vindication of Borges’’), a special issue in which twenty-one literary friends and acquaintances write in his defense. 1943 Anti-British military officers seize governmental power. 1944 Ficciones, stories. 1946 General Juan Domingo Perón is elected to the presidency by majority vote. Borges is removed from his library post and is offered a position as poultry inspector, which he declines. Accepts a number of teaching and lecturing jobs. 1949 El Aleph (The Aleph), stories. xxii borges and his fiction 1951 Fictions is published in Paris, the first foreign translation of a Borges book. 1952 Otras inquisiciones (Other Inquisitions), essays. Eva Perón dies. 1955 Perón government falls to a revolt by centrist army officers. Perón flees to Spain. Borges is appointed director of the National Library. The author becomes almost completely blind. 1956 New edition of Ficciones, with three additional stories. 1957 The University of Buenos Aires names Borges Professor of English Literature. With Margarita Guerrero: Manual de zoologı́a fantástica (A Handbook of Fantastic Zoology), vignettes. 1960 El hacedor (English version Dreamtigers), poems and short fictions. 1961 Shares with Samuel Beckett the first Formentor Prize, an international award granted by a group of European and American publishers. Teaches a semester at the University of Texas. 1962 Labyrinths and Ficciones, the first English collections of Borges’s work, are published in New York. 1963 Visits and lectures in Europe. 1965 Travels in other Latin American countries. 1967 Marries Elsa Astete Millán. 1967– Holds the Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetry at Harvard 1968 University. Delivers lectures throughout the United States. 1968 El libro de los seres imaginarios (The Book of Imaginary Beings), expanded edition of the earlier Manual de zoologı́a fantástica. Travels in Europe. Receives an honorary doctorate from Oxford University and numerous official honors on the Continent. 1969 El informe de Brodie (Doctor Brodie’s Report...